Newtown area towns may end expedited development approval process

Thomas Friestad @ThomasFriestad

Tuesday

Sep 11, 2018 at 6:17 AM

If Newtown Township, Upper Makefield and Wrightstown all approve, officials might eliminate the planned residential development option from their joint municipal zoning ordinance. The option lets developers skip past meetings with township advisory boards in exchange for participating in at least one public hearing, where township supervisors can collect testimony about proposed projects.

Developers in three Newtown area municipalities soon might lose an option for presenting project plans directly to the boards of supervisors, without appearing before local advisory boards.

Newtown Township, Upper Makefield and Wrightstown are holding hearings on a proposal to eliminate all mentions of planned residential developments (PRDs) from the joint municipal zoning ordinance they share.

Under the PRD process, developers don't have to submit plans to a township's planning commission or zoning hearing board to review. Instead, supervisors alone get to decide whether to grant tentative approval for the plans after holding at least one public hearing, where they can ask members of the development team to testify.

Newtown Township will be the first to hold a hearing at 7 p.m. Wednesday, while Wrightstown and Upper Makefield will follow, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17 and Tuesday, Sept. 18, respectively. Each town must then approve the proposal within 30 days of the final hearing for it to pass.

As is, PRDs are allowed in the towns' medium- and high-density residential districts, and require at least 25 homes to qualify. They can involve a mixture of dwelling types like single-family homes and townhouses, plus minimum required amounts of open space.

Local and state code describe PRDs as a vehicle for a mixture of units through "increased flexibility in the laws governing such development," in "an era of increasing urbanization and of growing demand for housing of all types."

The municipalities' proposal would expand an existing option for developers to balance out the one it would take away.

Performance subdivisions, which allow for the same mixture of home types as PRDs, would be permitted as a by-right use in the towns' medium- and high-density residential districts, rather than just their low- and medium-density country residential districts.

Per local code, performance subdivisions are intended "to promote sound land planning and to provide a variety of housing choices," with the benefit of preserving open space.

Vicki Kushto, counsel for the Newtown Joint Zoning Council, said in an email the PRD option is a duplicate of the performance subdivision use. The PRDs also involve a "complicated" administrative process that permits development plans to be submitted before they are fully engineered, she said.

Newtown Township Supervisor John Mack said he believes PRDs served more of a purpose in the past, when development plans were sure to have necessary components and studies, such as those pertaining to traffic, and did not need review from advisory boards.

But in recent years, developers began interpreting the state code literally and submitting sketch plans without engineering details under the PRD process, said Wrightstown Supervisor Chester Pogonowski. "This made it difficult to dot the 'i's and cross the 't's," he said.

Newtown Township officials said reports and studies were missing from previous versions of the proposed Arcadia Green development, a project supervisors denied following PRD processes in 2015 and 2017. Officials currently are holding hearings for a third version of the Arcadia plans, which would entail 23 single-family homes and 53 townhouses near the intersection of Buck Road and the Newtown Bypass.

At a hearing last month, Arcadia attorney John VanLuvanee accused supervisors of planning to remove the PRD option to block his client's project.

"It's apparent to me that, behind the scenes, (Newtown Township) has decided that they're going to do away with PRDs in an effort to frustrate the development of Arcadia Green," VanLuvanee told the board. "PRDs have worked in this township for 45 years. I fail to see what has changed other than the desire of the supervisors of this township to see that nobody gets to do anything with the property."

Newtown Joint Zoning Council meeting minutes show officials began talk of eliminating the PRD option in March 2017 — before Arcadia submitted the second and third versions of its plans — saying "the need for such has been exhausted within the territories."

Mack also said the members of the township planning commission and zoning heard board are experts, "much better equipped" to analyze development plans and make recommendations than most supervisors.

"After that process, it's much easier for the board of supervisors to make a decision, which usually follows the recommendations of the experts," he said.

Officials said 21 PRDs have been approved in Newtown Township and none have been approved in Wrightstown. This news organization was unsuccessful in confirming the PRD count in Upper Makefield.

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